FEBRUARY 2023 VISA BULLETIN: ANALYSIS

The Department of State has recently issued the February 2023 Visa Bulletin.  This blog post analyzes this month's Visa Bulletin. 

Visa Bulletin

Table A:  Final Action Dates -- Applications with these dates may be approved for their Green Card (Permanent Residency card) or Immigrant Visa appointment.

 

EB	Worldwide	CHINA	INDIA	PHILIPPINES
1st	C	01FEB22	01FEB22	C
2nd	01NOV22	08JUN19	08OCT11	01NOV22
3rd	C	01AUG18	15JUN12	C
Other workers	01JAN20	22DEC13	15JUN12	01JAN20

Table B: Dates of Filing

The USCIS is using the Table B Dates of Filing chart for I-485 employment-based filings. See: USCIS Visa Bulletin Dates

MU Law Analysis

This was an uneventful Visa Bulletin.  Most dates remained the same as in the January 2022 Visa Bulletin. 

The WW and Philippine EB-3 remain current. We expect these categories to be current through much of the current fiscal year. 

EB-3 Other Workers, which is the category for occupations such as Nurse Aides, remains retrogressed.  It reverted to January 2020 because of continued higher usage than expected by the State Department. 

We remind all readers that the FY 2023 employment-based immigrant visa limit is 197,000, as compared with 281,507 in FY 2022.  These quotas are greater than the usual 140,000 employment-based limit because of spillovers of unused family-based immigrant visas in the prior fiscal year. Slowdowns related to COVID caused the allocation of family-based visas to be short of the limit.  It is expected that the employment-based quota will return to 140,000 in FY 2024, which starts October 1, 2023.